The construction consortium pulled out after a workplace safety breach in 2018 and has stopped work on the project, leaving it incomplete.

The work will now be delivered by a group called Rail Projects Victoria, which is still working on its business case.

The Department of Transport was blamed for a lack of “due diligence” during the project, including backing a business case that included “over-optimistic expectations” about freight demand and “untested assumptions about the project's complexity”.